Comment by headwayoldest | Hacker News Reader

Comment by headwayoldest | Hacker News Reader

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>Members of the anti-GG and social justice crowds have carried out similarly stupid and counterproductive acts of aggression and bullying.

It's not directly relevant to the topic, but if you really believe this you should better educate yourself with regard to what has been done in the name of gamergate.

>IMHO you should be placing more of the blame on our fucked up militarized police system that lets bored teenagers send an armored car full of soldiers, armed to the teeth and ready to kill to anyone's house with a single phone call. If it takes a few SWATings for the public to realize that this is completely unacceptable, so be it.

SWATing has been an ongoing thing for quite a while, with a few cases making their way into mainstream news. Perpetrators (when caught) are prosecuted quite heavily. Waving off SWATing as not the fault of places which allow and encourage harassment in the form of doxing just because the military industrial complex exists seems like blaming auto manufacturers for drunk drivers.

I've actually had arguments with people who believe drunk driving is the fault of "the system" for not making transit instant and free for everyone. So blaming auto manufacturers is the sort of thing people actually believe.

> "I've actually had arguments with people who believe drunk driving is the fault of "the system" for not making transit instant and free for everyone."

"Fault" is a concept that I believes always lies with the person who is actually committing the crime, but I think the general idea isn't outlandish.

Say I've got a problem of drunks leaving the bars at night and pissing on the sidewalk. I can make it illegal, arrest anyone who does it, and when the complaints continue to roll in I can point out you can't make people not break the law. It is nobody's fault but their own, surely I cannot be responsible for another man's bladder.

Alternatively I can recognize the futile nature of attempting to correct this behavior with laws alone, and do something like install public toilets in problem areas.

Designing a society to accommodate people such that they are less likely to break the law does not mean that I am assuming responsibility for their actions, nor assigning fault to myself when people break the law.

This particular person believed that going out and getting drunk was a basic human right, and that having to be responsible for your own transportation infringed on that right. Less of the pragmatic concessions and more of the bizarre notions of fault.

>It's not directly relevant to the topic, but if you really believe this you should better educate yourself with regard to what has been done in the name of gamergate.

No, really, gamergate supporters like Milo Yiannopoulos have also been doxxed, sent death threats to, sent threatening packages to, had their family members harassed, etc. The social justice movement contains honest supporters of diversity in tech, and psychotic scumbags like Shanley Kane. There are idiotic assholes on both "sides," and you shouldn't let them discount the entirety of the movements they "support."

I'm in no way excusing SWATing, but I absolutely think the outrage it generates should be directed towards our militarized police system. The drunk driving analogy is stupid because the benefits that cars provide to society outweigh the negatives of drunk drivers, but there is no good reason for an anonymous tip to warrant armed soldiers breaking into your house in the night, usually making no indication that they are policemen and not just thugs and robbers, and shooting you dead if you so much as move the wrong way in your confusion. It's a profoundly dangerous and easy to abuse system, and it needs to change.

>No, really, gamergate supporters like Milo Yiannopoulos have also been doxxed

I don't think someone searching his twitter feed for a phone number he himself posted for self promotion falls under the same category as taking selfies outside someone's place of work.

>The drunk driving analogy is stupid because the benefits that cars provide to society outweigh the negatives of drunk drivers, but there is no good reason for an anonymous tip to warrant armed soldiers breaking into your house in the night, usually making no indication that they are policemen and not just thugs and robbers, and shooting you dead if you so much as move the wrong way in your confusion. It's a profoundly dangerous and easy to abuse system, and it needs to change.

You're right, the system does need to change. And I would even agree that is linked to the issues of online harassment. However, that is not the cause of online harassment, nor would improvements to police reaction policies put a stop to doxing.

>I don't think someone searching his twitter feed for a phone number he himself posted for self promotion

The parent commenter was referring to an incident when Shanley Kane tweeted Yiannopoulos' personal phone number, which was not intended to be public. He subsequently received a deluge of messages (does this qualify as "harassment"?) Such behavior is commonplace amongst the SJW set, and not so much among their opponents, contrary to the mainstream perception.

He posted his number privately in order to facilitate an interview regarding the topic at hand. I'd argue publishing that is far more egregious than taking a selfie outside someones publicly listed place of work.

Either way they are both shitty behaviours, don't really think we need to take a one vs the other.

I think the implied threat to personal safety is more jarring than obnoxious phone calls, but this is so far off topic it belongs elsewhere.

The kinds of harassment we've seen come out of one man's personal crusade against an ex-girlfriend are disgusting, and it's incumbent upon all of us to discourage it.

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